LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Steven Yeun is getting some of highest acclaim of his career, and awards buzz, for the South Korean film “Burning,”…
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Steven Yeun is getting some of highest acclaim of his career, and awards buzz, for the South Korean film “Burning,” a lyrical and anxious adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning.” But it almost didn’t happen, at least with Yeun.
Director Lee Chang-dong, a celebrated filmmaker who has not yet reached the Western name recognition of some of his countrymen like Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”) or Bong Joon-ho (“Okja”), had cast a Korean actor in the role of Ben, a mysterious and disquieting outsider with Gatsby-like slickness who comes into the lives of two lonely young people. When scheduling conflicts and a delay in production left them without a Ben, someone suggested Yeun, the 34-year-old Korean-American actor who came to prominence playing Glenn on the popular AMC series “The Walking Dead,” and had mentioned wanting to work with Lee during his “Okja” press tour.
“I only saw Steven in the film ‘Okja,’ and while I thought he delivered a great performance, I didn’t think he was the right person to play Ben,” Lee said in an email.
But screenwriter Jungmi Oh thought otherwise and persuaded Lee to meet with Yeun, who had not only been a great admirer of Lee’s for years, but had also fortuitously started reading Nietzsche recently (“Just light fare, bathroom reading,” Yeun jokes.) Lee ended up being impressed with Yeun’s understanding of the character and decided to take a chance.
“He told me that he thinks emptiness is what’s at the core of this character and he was very familiar with that sense of emptiness because he was experiencing it himself.
